Abstract

If two parallel threads access the same location and at least one of them performs a write, a race exists. The detection of races---a major problem in parallel debugging---is complicated by the presence of atomic critical sections. In programs without critical sections, the existence of a race is usually a bug leading to nondeterministic behavior. In programs with critical sections, however, accesses in parallel critical sections are not considered bugs, as the programmer, in specifying the critical sections, presumably intends them to run in parallel. Thus, a race detector should find "data races"---races between accesses not contained in atomic critical sections.

Citations